Dunno what Freud would have to say about Marc Jacob‘s dreamy Fall collection, but I’d say the designer is feeling free and easy now that he isn’t haggling with Paris every other day to design Louis Vuitton, nor dealing with the drudgery of designing Marc by Marc, which has clearly bored him to tears for years.

If you think that’s reading too much into his cloud pillows suspended from the ceiling and the skyblue cylindrical cushions on which we sat at his show tonight, consider that the sound track was a munchkin voice reading the lyrics to “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Last season, Jacobs gave us an apocalyptic cinder-strewn vision of the collapse of a shallow world, with pulp fiction and cigarette stubs strewn among the cinders.

We were in hell last season, and now we’d like to think we are in heaven.

The collection itself was vibing the 70s with a delightful sense of comfort and ease. Slim sheaths and long pants, chunky heels on quilted boots, knitted yoga wear (!) with pant legs that puddled around the season’s coolest athletic shoes, and then the undulating prints that morphed eventually into fluttery air-light ruffles. It was transporting and wearable — and that’s tricky.

Ralph Lauren did not cave in to the snow on Thursday morning, nor did he shovel or salt the sidewalk in front of his show venue. As a result, some people arrived looking like abominable snowmen, and yes, I’m talking about myself.

Getting to a fashion show in the midst of a blizzardy morning was actually a fun adventure. The show revealed two collections, a Bob Dylan-esque series of gypsy dresses and shearling bomber jackets with smart attitude for the company’s mid-priced, and a sleek designer collection with lots of looks that — if uninspired — will be appropriate for every occasion.

Macy’s may be one of Calvin Klein‘s biggest customers, selling tee shirts, underwear, and fragrances, but Francisco Costa‘s designer collections each season for the brand set the tone for all that. Wooly sheath dresses with long vertical seaming in back – and similar coats of stiff fuzzy woolens — set the tone for Fall 2014. Wooly, wooly, wooly, and stiff. Of course, the boxer briefs will be entirely different.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.